Lorenzo BARTOLINI (1777-1850) Marie Louise,... Lot 212

Lorenzo BARTOLINI (1777-1850) Marie Louise, Empress Rare bust in gilded and chased bronze, in hermes. Marked on the front "MARIE LOUISE IMPERATRICE". 34 x 17 x 14 cm. B.E. First Empire period. 25 000/35 000 € Provenance : Former Guy Ledoux Lebard collection. History: Rare representation in hermes, wearing a diadem decorated with the Imperial Eagle, in the purest antique style. This representation was probably intended for the Kingdom of Italy. Related work: Bartolini made a hermes bust of the Empress Josephine in the antique style, preserved in the Malmaison collections. Biography: Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850) Son of a blacksmith, he had a difficult start, making copies and sculpted furniture in the firm of the brothers Giuseppe and Pietro Pisani in Florence, before joining the sculptor Barthélemy Corneille in Volterra. Then he went to Paris in 1797 where he frequented the workshop of Jacques-Louis David and honed his skills as an alabaster modeler: there he studied painting with Desmarets and sculpture in the workshop of François-Frédéric Lemot. He won the second prize of the Academy in 1803 with the bas-relief Cleobis et Biton, and was one of the sculptors who worked on the column erected in Place Vendôme (1806-1810), executing the bas-relief of the Battle of Austerlitz. He made many small pieces for the writer Vivant Denon and busts of the composers Méhul and Cherubini, but his great patron was Napoleon, for whom he created a colossal bronze bust for the Louvre portal. The high protection of the emperor and his sister Elisa Baciocchi explains his appointment in 1807 to the post of professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, despite the opposition of local artists. Elisa Baciocchi wanted to make her principality a centre of sculpture production under the Empire, so she created a savings bank, the Banca elisisiana, with the aim of stimulating artistic production and financing, with the support of Jean-Gabriel Eynard in particular, a state factory of which Bartolini was also director. He thus became the official sculptor of the Bonaparte family and, in 1809, produced a bust of Elisa Baciocchi. In 1815, after the fall of Napoleon, he returned to Florence